Adverse Psychological Effects of ECT - ECT Effects

Written by Lucy Johnstone

`What I was most concerned about wasn't the fact that it was unpleasant at the time, it was how it was going to affect me for the rest of my life.. .I remember feeling very disorientated and feeling that I'd been damaged for life '.

For several, ECT was a confirmation that they were truly mad, and had reached the last option:

`It seemed to reflect how ill I was, the fact that he was saying I had to have ECT this time...this was the last desperate thing that they do'.

`It was because this was the last resort.. so what is there left, annihilation or what?'

'I knew I wasn't crazy. I knew what had happened. (After ECT) I was beginning to think maybe Iam mad.. .I must be mad to have ECT'.

What other emotional or psychological effects has ECT had on you?

Fear is the only psychological reaction to ECT that has been investigated to any extent. However, these participants described a complex range of emotional responses including feelings of humiliation, increased compliance, failure, worthlessness, betrayal, lack of confidence and degradation, and a sense of having been abused and assaulted:

`It made me feel like a cabbage, like I wasn't worth anything at all. All I could do was sit around all day'.

`It was like I was a non-person and it didn't matter what anybody did to me'.

'I suppose I saw myself as worthless for a long time...almost being an empty person and having to start again, having to build up a personality, having to build yourself up'.

`It's horrible to think that these people, doctors and nursing staff, are going to see you having a fit. It's degrading'.

'I knew that the only way I could get out would be by being insignificant...by being a very good patient, and it worked. I wasn't any better, If elt quite terrible'.

'I suppose as a woman, If feel. .. a lot of stuff was reinforced. You know, being the gender I am, it feels like you have to comply even more '.

`It made me feel like a freak, and it's only since I've talked about that with a therapist about two years ago that I've got over that feeling '.

`This psychiatrist had built this relationship with me, so I trusted him and then he did that (prescribed ECT)... This chap had been clued up enough to realise he needed to build my trust, but didn't appear to be clued up enough to know that giving somebody electric shocks to their head might actually damage that trust...ECT I feel is just such a betrayal, this frightened young woman and they do that. Terrible'.

`It's a really horrible feeling...a sense of failure, and what's wrong with me that I'm not getting better'.

`It felt like I had been got at, yes, bashed, abused, as if my brain had been abused. It did feel like an assault'.

Most people said that they did not mind others knowing that they had had ECT. For some, though, the perception by them and others that ECT is an intervention reserved for the extremes of madness, produced a strong sense of shame and stigma:

'I was deeply, deeply ashamed of having ECT...this was real serious stuff, this was a mad person'.

`People can't imagine what on earth situation you need to be in, that you need to be electrically shocked. So they imagine that you must have been some kind of absolute raging animal or something to need that. ' 'I have told a couple of people in the past and they think for you to have ECT you must really be off your rocker'.

ECT was experienced by several participants not just as a sign of madness, but also as a punishment for and confirmation of badness.

`At that time I was completely convinced I was being punished for something.. . . thought, well, I must have done something wrong to be treated like this'.

`Maybe if I had been good or if I hadn't done this or that, I wouldn't be punished. Yes, I thought it's a form of abuse, a punishment '. Three of the women identified themselves as survivors of child sexual abuse. Of these, two drew explicit parallels between these early experiences and the experience of being given ECT, in terms of the emotions experienced at the time, confusingly mixed feelings towards both psychiatrists and original abusers, and inability to deal with their own powerful feelings of helplessness and rage afterwards:

`It certainly felt, "Do what you like ", and that's something If elt as a child, that I had no power, there was no way I could stop anyone doing whatever they wanted to me, so rather than get hurt I'll let them do it and maybe they'll like me...especially because it was men doing it, the men actually operating the machinery or whatever, and I can remember it was men putting the needle in. Yes, again there would have been no way I would have said I don't want this..And then just sort of lying there, feeling really frightened and yet completely passive. So it was like all trapped, all my emotions were trapped anyway and my feelings were trapped, so it was all trapped inside. And on the other hand not caring what happened to me'.

`I've had physical abuse as a child and I've had sexual abuse as a child and mental abuse as a child. I suppose I did think about it a couple of times going through the ECT, that this was some form of abuse, being put on you when you don't want it, or being more or less said that you've got to have it...l sometimes feel very angry to the people involved, that I can't get back at them or take revenge at them. So that I don't do that, I self-harm, I cut myself '.

(LJ)`Who do you want to get back at?' `Sometimes it's the doctors, the professionals, sometimes it's the abusers that have abused me... always tend to turn it in on myself I've been told many times by doctors and counsellors, "You've got to stop turning it on yourself", but I don't...It's like If feel I need to punish myself, maybe all the abuse is all my fault'.